Yvonne Van Rossenberg

Why should I share my knowledge? A multiple foci of commitment perspective

Knowledge-intensive firms need to leverage their individual knowledge assets via knowledge sharing to create collective knowledge resources. This process is, however, in the control of the knowledge worker. We explore this personal and emotive quality of knowledge sharing by asking: ‘How does employee commitment impact on knowledge sharing?’ We study professional service firms operating in cross-boundary environments and examine the impact of commitment to the organisation, profession, team and client on knowledge sharing. The article contributes directly to our understanding of the interrelationship between (a) the types and foci of commitment and (b) bidirectional knowledge sharing.

Engaged and committed? The relationship between work engagement and commitment in professional service firms

Our study explores the relationship between employee engagement and foci-commitment of employees in professional service firms (PSFs). PSFs compete on the basis of their ability to encourage their employees to generate exceptional knowledge-based services and products, acting within and beyond the organizational boundaries. In order to achieve these outputs, the PSFs need to ensure that their professionals are engaged and committed. Drawing on 375 surveys from the employees of a global PSF, we compare two models to test the relationship between work engagement and multi-foci commitment: the organization, the client, the team and the profession. We first explore an overall positive effect of work engagement on commitment to all four foci. We then compare the overall impact to the independent effects of work engagement dimensions on four commitment foci. Our findings suggest that work engagement with three dimensions is a better-fitting model in the PSFs context.

The impact of supply base complexity on disruptions and performance: the moderating effects of slack and visibility

In the face of increasing supply base complexity, organisations have to develop new ways to manage or mitigate risk. This paper investigates the impact of four dimensions of complexity on the frequency of disruptions and plant performance. We apply insights from organisational information processing theory to understand how organisations can mitigate against the impact of more frequent disruptions. We test the moderating effects of slack resources as a means to absorb the effects of disruptions and supply visibility as a means to improve the ability to handle disruptions. The model is tested with data from 264 supply chain management professionals. Our findings broadly support the original hypotheses and suggest that supply base complexity can increase the frequency of disruptions and reduce plant performance but that slack resources and visibility can help to mitigate the effects. The study offers valuable insights into the management of supply base complexity.

Multiple foci of commitment and intention to quit in knowledge-intensive organizations (KIOs): what makes professionals leave?

Abstract This study contributes to our understanding of the link between the multiple foci of commitment (i.e. organization, profession, team, and/or client) and the intention to quit in a knowledge-intensive organizational context. This link is important to understand given that KIOs are reliant upon the commitment of their employees in order to survive. Drawing upon the Theory of Attitudes, which enables us to link commitment and intention to quit, and the Field Theory, which enables us to understand how employees commit to various foci, we ask two research questions: (1) What is the independent impact of the professionals’ commitment to the organization, profession, team, and client on the ability of the organization to retain professionals? (2) What is the impact of the interaction between these foci of commitment (i.e. organization, profession, team, and client) and retention? Multiple regression analyses are based on data from 282 employees of a global KIO which provides outsourcing and consulting services on HRM and employment services to around 40 global clients. Our findings show that (i) organizational commitment and team commitment are negatively, and profession commitment is positively related to the professionals’ intention to quit; (ii) organizational–profession commitment interaction is negatively, and team profession commitment interaction is positively linked to the intention to quit of professionals. These results are further interpreted by drawing on 34 semi-structured interviews conducted with the professionals from the same global knowledge-intensive organization. Our results have significant implications for the leaders in KIOs as retention of such valuable human capital is central to their success.

Who does what in enabling ambidexterity? Individual Actions and HRM practices

Abstract In this paper, we explain how ambidexterity, the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation, is enabled at the individual level of analysis. Research on ambidexterity has been dominated by theoretical approaches focusing on the organisational level; however, we know little about how ambidexterity is enacted by employees. There is also limited work on the multilevel aspects of individual employee actions, for example, particular roles and specifically the level of seniority of the role. We address these gaps by asking: Which individual actions are undertaken by employees at particular levels of seniority in the organization to enable ambidexterity? In order to answer this question we draw on previous research to construct reliable measures of the individual actions that enable ambidexterity. The hypothesized mediation effect of these individual actions is confirmed on the basis of survey data from 212 employees from a UK-based Professional Service Firm. The findings indicate that senior employees are more likely to use ‘integration’, ‘role expansion’ and ‘tone setting’, whilst employees with specialist knowledge about their clients use ‘gap filling’ to enable ambidexterity. Finally, we draw together these findings with 35 interviews conducted to present the HRM practices which support ambidexterity.

The future of workplace commitment: key questions and directions

ABSTRACT This position paper presents the state-of-the art of the field of workplace commitment. Yet, for workplace commitment to stay relevant, it is necessary to look beyond current practice and to extrapolate trends to envision what will be needed in future research. Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold, first, to consolidate our current understanding of workplace commitment in contemporary work settings and, second, to look into the future by identifying and discussing avenues for future research. Representative of the changing nature of work, we explicitly conceptualize workplace commitment in reference to (A) “Temporary work”, and (B) “Cross-boundary work”. Progressing from these two themes, conceptual, theoretical and methodological advances of the field are discussed. The result is the identification of 10 key paths of research to pursues, a shared agenda for the most promising and needed directions for future research and recommendations for how these will translate into practice.

A tale of two approaches: how and why a person-centred approach would provide new insight into the leadership of innovation

In managing innovation, leaders set out to make sense of large chunks of information. This consists of the constant processing of data from a variety of sources, such as performance data, financial reports, market analyses, insight from employee surveys and management literature. Analysing and comparing information from a variety of sources can be experienced as a daunting and technical task. One of the risks lies in using conservative and ‘best practice’ types of data analysis. This chapter will outline why this limits insight in complex processes, which is particularly the case managing innovation.

Advancing Theory on Workplace Commitment: Catching up After the Wave of Methodological Advances

Representative of the changing nature of work and the employment relationship, recent advances in the study of workplace commitment include the use of a series of novel methodologies and a wide var...